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the hands wandering around.” Brock shrugged. “I was hoping to get some of the mommas out there before they calve.”
    “That’s my intention.” Cade nodded. “I haven’t sent any of the boys out yet, but they have just been checking it early. Did you see who it was?”
    “Naw just saw the horse.” Brock led his horse into the ranch yard, glancing back at Cade as they left the barn. “I’ll find out who it was later. Make certain they checked that old den that wolf was using last winter. I don’t want to lose any more calves to that wily ole bitch.”
    Cade nodded, glancing up at the small hill that rose behind the ranch house. With its slope, it covered the better part of the back pasture, and on the far side, wolves were prone to use the natural cavern there for a den. They tried to keep it cleared of the animals, yet they always managed to find a way in.
    “Let me know what they find.” Cade nodded, then turned his horse and set it into a quick canter along the fence line. Several miles away the barbed wire and wood fence was wearing.
    Cade enjoyed keeping the white painted planked fence in place near to the ranch house. Marly had loved it when she was just a child, proclaiming that it made it look more like a home. That made it worth all the aggravation in the world. Thinking of Marly again only made his dick throb. He shook his head, trying to push the sight of her in her bed, out of his mind. The feel of her, slick and hot, the taste of her sweet and tangy. He gritted his teeth. Dammit, it was going to be a long day. Lora Leigh
    Marly’s Choice
    22
    CHAPTER FOUR

    It was good to be home. Marly stood at her bedroom balcony, overlooking the swimming pool and the flower gardens out back and inhaled the sweet scents of spring. The soft peace of the late afternoon shimmered around her, easing the restless yearning in her body only slightly.
    Below, the heated pool shimmered with a glimmer of mist from the rising warmth, and the flower gardens were showing bursts of green. The renewal of the Earth. She loved spring. The days were cool, the nights crisp and clear, and all around, it seemed the air pulsed with energy.
    She could hear the muted sounds of the ranch yard out front. The cowboys working out at the barn to the side of the house, the call of the horses in the pasture. The sounds that had comforted her in the years since her mother had left her with Grandpa Joe and Cade. She hadn’t seen her mother since. Not a phone call, a card or a letter. There were Christmas presents under the tree each year from her, but Marly suspected that was Cade’s doing. He had always done everything he could to ease the pain of that desertion.
    She loved him. Marly closed her eyes on the bittersweet thought. From the first day she had seen him, his eyes swirling with emotions, his harsh face softening at the sight of her filthy appearance, she had loved him. At first, it had been the simple, sweet love of a child who knew that if there was one person on Earth who would protect her, it was Cade.
    But somewhere, the feeling had changed. Over the years, it had deepened, grown, and no matter the arguments against it, she loved him. She wanted him. It wasn’t even the desire she had as a teenager, filled with visions of kisses and warm touches. It was a need that throbbed in her, filled her, made the nights she spent beneath his roof intolerable.
    He slept in the room adjoining hers. He always had, in case she had nightmares. Sometimes, she could hear him moving around in his room, late at night, restless. She would listen, and imagine him coming to her, sliding into the bed beside her, his hard body moving against her, over her. But he never did. He never seemed to see her as anything more than the little child he had raised.
    She was abnormal, Marly thought. She was as sick as Grandpa Joe had always accused her of being. A woman marked with the sins of her mother, and forced to suffer the same unnatural needs. Marly had